Revisiting Gargoyles Episode-by-Episode

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Monthly Archives: June 2012

Holy crap, this episode is good. The bad guys, the good guys, but especially the bad guys. Also robots and explosions and lasers and rocket launchers and collapsing castles. And lots of crying and yelling and face-touching. No, really. It’s great.

The neverending series opener continues with another two-fold episode focusing on and contrasting the two women in Goliath’s life, old and new. Though there’s a whole lot of set-up for next week’s grand premiere finale (what?), we still have some thrilling action sequences to keep things interesting.

If the copious amount of action last time was too much for you, here’s a chance for the complete opposite in an episode that functions as Elisa’s big introduction. Seriously, there’s lots of talking and pretty landscapes and only one little explosion that was a total accident. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t good, or packed with enough shipper-fuel to drive a truck cross-country.

If you thought things were going to crap last time, prepare for even more of the emotional roller coaster that is Goliath’s Life Sucks: The TV Series. This time around we’re getting a bit more of a transition episode, moving us farther away from our backstory and into the actual series plot. We’re also basically getting two episodes in one, not to mention a whole lot of action. Like…a whole lot. With lasers. And a ponytail.

For this opening episode, the entry is going to be much longer and more thorough than I plan to get on a regular basis, since it’s worth taking time delving in-depth into each characters’ introductions, how the episode succeeds introducing the concept to new viewers, and just because there’s so much going on.

The biggest downside to opening up with a five(!)-parter is you can’t treat your first episode like a standard pilot. You can’t fully introduce every character, you can’t flesh out the overall concept, and you can’t give an example of what a typical episode of your show will be like. The story here is so big in scope that it’s going to take a while to really settle into feeling like Gargoyles the TV show (not until around episode 4, if memory serves.) As a result, part one feels a little strange in places—not in a bad way at all, just that it’s clear that this is a prologue of sorts. For people watching this episode for the first time, there’s a nagging feeling that we’re hearing “Wait, there’s more!” On one hand it’s great, because it basically forces any pseudo-interested viewer to return for episode two. But at the same time, if you aren’t hooked by the medieval stuff when “Gargoyles in 1994” would have worked for you, you potentially lose a good viewer. It’s the catch-22 of such a large-scale pilot, but there probably isn’t any way to avoid it since this episode is really friggin’ huge.